The retail and wholesale sectors would see the largest employment gains, but the gains would also spread to sectors such as real estate, health services, food services and arts and entertainment, said Paul Bachman, director of the Beacon Hill Institute, an economic research arm at Suffolk University.

Bachman, presenting on behalf of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, painted a rosy view of the no-sales-tax scenario, but not everyone agreed. Chief among the dissenters was another economist, Paul Dion, chief of the state Office of Revenue Analysis and a member of the task force that’s studying the issue.

While Bachman’s model suggests the state would lose about $350 million in annual tax revenue once it adjusts to having no sales tax, Dion said after the meeting that his projections suggest the loss would be “significantly more.”

And Bachman, when questioned by Dion about job gains, acknowledged that his model shows that while the private sector would gain some 25,000 jobs, the public sector would lose about 6,000.

Dion’s response: “That’s it? That seems low.”

The task force, formally known as the Special Joint Legislative Commission to Study the Sales Tax Repeal Act of 2013, is chaired by Rep. Jan Malik, D-Warren, a liquor store owner who sponsored a bill this year to abolish the sales tax. When the bill failed, lawmakers created the study commission, made up of business leaders and appointees from the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, the Rhode Island Hospitality Association, the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, as well as the legislature and the state Department of Revenue.

Malik capped the Bachman-Dion exchanges by echoing a theme he has aired at past meetings.

“What we’re doing in this state right now is not working,” he said.

He added: “What we have to do is find out whose model is accurate.”

With revenues of $878.9 million, the sales tax was the second-largest contributor to state coffers during the fiscal year that ended June 30. But repeal supporters, pointing to the state’s high unemployment and its perpetually low rankings in “business friendliness,” say abolishing it would be a cure for Rhode Island’s economic ills.

Michael Stenhouse, CEO of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, said the group’s research suggests eliminating that tax would have a bigger impact than changes to other major taxes.

“By eliminating the sales tax, a number of economic gears begin to turn,” he told the commission. Chief among them would be the buying habits of Rhode Islanders who now shop in Massachusetts, as well as those of Massachusetts and Connecticut residents who live near the Rhode Island border, he said.

At 7 percent, Rhode Island’s sales tax is tied with those in Indiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Tennessee for 2{+n}{+d}-highest sales tax in the country. That also puts it ahead of Massachusetts (6.25 percent) and Connecticut (6.35 percent), though Rhode Island exempts 63 goods and services and will add more — “wine and spirits” and “works of art” — to that list before the year is out.

While Malik urged Bachman and Dion to meet and reach accord on the impact, other speakers at the hearing urged the commission to back the no-sales tax plan.

“Rhode Island is the hardest state in the country” for people who want to open a “small business,” said Ron Valiquette, district manager for Illinois-based Legacy Analytics. “If we went to a zero sales tax it would be a tremendous change in the way that people look at our state.”